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Heritage
Foundation...
Morning
Bell: Obamacare Falls Short of Promises to Uninsured
by Amy
Payne
July 25,
2012
Two new
reports out yesterday continue to knock down President Obama’s promises
about
Obamacare: his “If you like your plan, you can keep it,” and the
promise to
significantly shrink the ranks of the uninsured.
According
to a new study from consulting firm Deloitte, almost one of out of 10
employers
said they are going to drop coverage for their employees because of
Obamacare,
while another 10 percent said they “remain unsure” about what they are
going to
do. As the vast majority of Americans have health insurance through
their
workplaces, this is a huge blow.
Yesterday
the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) dealt another blow with its
updated
outlook on the health care law, as it attempted to integrate the
Supreme
Court’s ruling into its projections.
Although
Obamacare spends more than $1 trillion to get people covered, CBO
predicts it
will still leave 30 million Americans uninsured, falling far short of
what was
promised.
CBO’s
announcement said that Obamacare could cost less than originally
projected—but
the reason for the drop was that fewer people will be covered.
Even with
the updated cost estimate, Heritage’s Kate Nix explains: “The law will
now add
$1.17 trillion in new government spending over 10 years—paid for by
massive tax
hikes on all Americans and robbing money from the Medicare program.”
Although
President Obama campaigned on the dream of universal coverage, that
remains
simply a dream. In fact, each time the CBO has updated its projections,
the
number of uninsured under Obamacare increases. Nix breaks it down:
Since day
one, it’s been clear that Obamacare will not achieve universal
coverage, and
every time CBO revisits the law, the numbers show just that. In March
2010,
when the law passed, CBO predicted that there would be 22 million
people still
without insurance in 2019. In March 2012, the estimate increased to 27
million
in 2022. Now, the number has once again increased—to 30 million. So
Obamacare
leaves just as many people uninsured as it covers.
“It leaves
just as many people uninsured as it covers” wouldn’t have been a very
convincing slogan for the lawmakers who believed that Obamacare would
help the
uninsured.
Even this
CBO projection is merely a guess. The agency is guessing what will
happen now
that states aren’t being forced to expand their Medicaid programs.
Though the
Supreme Court allowed Obamacare’s individual mandate to stand as a tax,
it
struck down the law’s forced Medicaid expansion as unconstitutional.
But as the
CBO said, “what states will be able to do and what they will decide to
do are
both highly uncertain. As a result…[the] estimates reflect an
assessment of the
probabilities of different outcomes.”
Those
outcomes are up in the air, because most of the nation’s governors
haven’t
decided whether to expand their Medicaid programs yet. States that do
may face
“a large extra cost,” the CBO said.
Heritage’s
Nina Owcharenko warned states not to buckle under Administration
pressure to
move forward with the expansion of Medicaid. And for good reason—the
unintended
consequences continue to mount, and the story grows worse with every
day that
the law stays on the books.
Read this
and other articles at Heritage Foundation
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